A British manufacturer of a drug used to execute a convicted killer in Arizona
has denied supplying it to US authorities after a national shortage that
forced executions to be postponed across America.

Jeffrey Landrigan was executed on Tuesday night after the Supreme Court
reversed an earlier decision ordering a stay while Arizona refused to
explain where it had obtained the drug, sodium thiopental.

Supplies of the anaesthetic — one of three that typically make up an execution
cocktail, but which is also used for general anaesthesia and to relieve some
neurological conditions — have all but run dry in the US.